United States: Twitter is having trouble responding to political misinformation and other harmful posts on the social media platform, according to staff layoffs and an outside voting rights organization, as Elon Musk fired half of his staff from the US midterm election. Was fired a few days ago.
Many employees whose responsibility is to keep hate and false information off social media platforms were not affected by the recent mass layoffs. Musk cut only 15% of those frontline content-moderation employees, an executive claimed last week, compared to about 50% job cuts company-wide.
Employees claim that in addition to drastically reducing the number of employees who check the digital history and behavior of a specific account to determine whether it has been used maliciously and take appropriate action to suspend it, The company did this before the layoffs. To reduce "inside risk" during the transition period, the company claimed it had blocked access to those devices.
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As the US midterm elections end on Tuesday, recent developments are worrying. Although many Americans have already voted early and by mail, millions more are estimated to cast ballots in person.
Election observers worry that the platform may not be able to handle hate speech, false information that could jeopardize voter safety, and actors wishing to contest the results of legitimate elections across the country.
On Friday, researchers monitoring misinformation in the run-up to midterm elections alerted Twitter to three posts from well-known far-right figures pushing discredited claims of election fraud.
Three days later, the post is still live. On Monday, Common Cause contacted Twitter for an update, and the social media site responded that the posts were "under review."
According to Jesse Littlewood, Common Cause's vice president of campaigns, Twitter reacted very quickly before Musk took over. Before Musk became CEO, the group claimed he had regular contact with Twitter employees. He is currently receiving a response from a fake email address.
Littlewood said that "we were getting very quick decisions from them, sometimes within hours." It's like pushing the walk sign button at a stoplight, it continued, but nothing happens.
Musk removed the marketing, PR and editorial teams responsible for choosing what users see on Twitter. But some inside and outside the company were pleasantly surprised by his decision to keep most of Twitter's content moderation team.
Eventually, Musk pledged to promote free speech by easing Twitter's content restrictions and banning accounts that broke them. Additionally, they have promised to replace the current user verification system with a US$7.99 subscription fee.
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However, the fact that the content moderation team is still alive may mean that critical misinformation campaigns, such as calls for political violence, will continue to thwart, and that some may be wrong during a worst-case scenario. related to anti-information efforts. Will not allow elections.
In recent days, some of Musk's own tweets have been annotated in the context of fact-checking.
Two employees who survived the layoffs praised Twitter's global head of security and integrity, Joel Roth, for leveraging the importance of his team to Musk's goals, while avoiding actions that angered the volatile Tesla CEO. could do. Roth was previously a little-known executive.
Joel Roth "singlely saved the company," claimed a Twitter employee who requested anonymity for fear of his employment. In public, he appropriately and thoughtfully interacted with Elon Musk in a way that was respectful rather than subservient because Elon is king.
Since Musk took over, Roth has emerged as the public face of Twitter's content moderation and has often defended the platform's ongoing efforts to combat misinformation.
Roth's Twitter feed is consistently cited by Musk, a prolific tweeter with more than 110 million followers, as the most accurate reflection of the company's adherence to integrity standards. and billionaires, who agree that former Twitter executives Suppressed right-wing opinion stood up for Roth when ardent Musk supporters demanded his expulsion over previous comments they believed demonstrated Roth's liberal bias.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Roth, who previously fixed up Mac computers at an Apple Store, joined Twitter in 2015 after researching hate speech online at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
He was given a senior position in May that included "more than 120 policymakers, threat investigators, data analysts and operations experts, and was responsible for all user, content and security policies."
Requests for comment from Roth went unanswered
A legal expert who serves on Twitter's advisory board, the Trust and Safety Council, which was established in 2016, said she has long been impressed by Roth's candour about the difficulties of content moderation and the nuances of free speech, such as the significance of limiting abusive content to enable the free speech of women and other groups more likely to be harassed online.
Musk probably would have replaced the entire content moderation team with his "yes" men if he could have, according to Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and the head of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. The only explanation for why he hasn't is that he may realise that would render Twitter useless.
A Twitter employee claimed on Monday that layoff survivors were actively seeking new employment in part as a result of Musk's lack of commitment to maintaining the platform's neutrality from hate speech and misinformation.
The employee, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for their job security, claimed that because the job cuts included people in charge of civic integrity teams, Twitter's staff would be less effective at investigating and taking action on complaints about election-related misinformation.
According to Franks, there has always been a conflict between maximising profit and defending free speech and democracy within Twitter and other social media companies.
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She claimed that is only becoming more difficult under Musk, who has demonstrated Twitter's ability to act quickly by banning a comedian who made fun of him by using his impersonation account, despite the fact that the comedian had previously expressed opposition to Twitter's anti-abuse standards.
Because Musk has such a thin skin, I imagine someone in Roth's position at Twitter would have to play a pretty delicate game in order to avoid tripping any wires or provoking Musk's wrath.